Tag Archives: Lance

#1448: Lance

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

LANCE

VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER (PLAYMATES)

“Lance is all about having fun, even a million miles away from Earth’s comforts and distractions.  Full of confidence and even more full of himself, Lance thinks he’s everyone’s best friend, especially if they’re cute and female.  And while his cockiness often gets the better of him, he always comes through a fire fight.”

Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender has steadily become one of my favorite shows to watch.  Its third season dropped a month or so back, and was rather brief, but contained some of my favorite moments from the show to date.  Season 4 is supposed to hit at the end of this month, and I’m pretty excited to sit down and watch it.  Playmates picked up the license to Voltron back at the beginning of the year, and they’re finally get around to releasing the show’s five main Paladin heroes…well, some of them anyway.  Today, I’m taking a look at Lance, the Blue Paladin!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Lance is part of the second series of basic Voltron: Legendary Defender figures.  He’s the first of the three Paladins offered this time around.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 19 points of articulation.  As far as scaling, these guys certainly won’t be fitting in with any of the prior Voltron lines, but I can’t say I mind the size.  They should look okay with stuff like Playmates’ TMNT line and similarly scaled items.  The sculpt is all-new to this figure, and it’s a fairly decent one.  The articulation could perhaps stand to be worked in a little bit better, but it’s far from the most archaic configuration I’ve seen on a modern day figure.  Lance’s design has been tweaked ever so slightly to make it work a little bit better in three dimensions.  The head maintains the most accuracy, and does a fairly respectable job of capturing Lance’s likeness.  The body is decent enough. The major details are all there and pretty accurate.  It’s mostly the proportions that are different; they’re a little on the clunkier side than in the show.  Still, it’s a solid piece of work, and definitely shows improvement over the Series 1 figures.  In terms of paint, Lance is overall pretty decent.  There’s some slight slop here and there, and the whites of his eyes in particular seem to be a lot bigger than they really should be going by the sculpt.  That being said, all of the colors are rather vibrant, and he looks quite spiffy.  Lance is packed with his bayard in blaster form, his energy shield, and his helmet.  Both the blaster and shield are nice pieces, and he hand hold them well enough.  The helmet sits alright, but is definitely too bulky; I feel an alternate head might have been the better way of handling it.  Still, it’s better than I’d expected.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve been patiently waiting for the Paladins ever since Series 1 hit back in January.  They’ve sure taken their sweet time getting here.  I ended up coming across Lance, Shiro, and Keith almost entirely by accident at my local Walmart.  They only had one of each, and Keith’s face was all messed up, so only Lance and Shiro got brought home.  I’m quite happy with this figure.  Sure, there are a few things they could probably change, but for $10, this is a solid toy.

#0171: Lance & Red Lion

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

LANCE & RED LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS

In a rare move for me, I’m doing a theme week. This week is officially Voltron Week!

I’m actually a bit too young to have seen Voltron in its original airings, but through the magic of syndication, I got to watch at least once a week when I would stay at my grandparents. I was never super hooked on it, but I always enjoyed watching it. Sadly for me, there were no toys readily available, aside from the toys from Voltron: The Third Dimension, which just wasn’t the same. So, I went many years without any Voltron toys.

In 2011, Mattel announced they had acquired the Voltron license, and they would be releasing the 5 main characters and their lions from the original cartoon through their online store. Surprisingly for Mattel, they didn’t completely suck.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The first release of the line was Lance, packed with the Red Lion. The two were released as a set and were available on Matty Collector in February of 2012. Lance stands about 3 ¾ inches tall and features 18 points of articulation. Not a bad assortment of articulation, though wrist and ankle articulation would have been nice, and the mobility of the knee joints is a bit restricted. Lance’s sculpt is pretty good. Nothing amazing, and his upper arms are a bit strange looking, but he follows the look from the show pretty well. The paintwork is nice and clean; no slop or bleed over. Lance included an alternate helmeted head, a piece of the “blazing sword,” and a stand based on his “lion key.” I would have liked it if they had made the gun removable from its holster, but overall, he’s not too bad.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Red Lion is about 5 inches tall and about 9 inches long. He has 21 points of articulation, though most of those have been rendered useless through various springs and such. You can get the lion into a few poses, but nothing really substantial. Mostly, it’s just got the one pose. The sculpted work is nothing spectacular, but it’s not bad either. There are plenty of sharp details, and everything looks appropriately symmetrical and accurate to the show. Interestingly, the most detailed section is the cockpit, which is the section least likely to be seen all that often. Still, can’t blame them for putting in the effort. The paint is perfectly fine. Sparse, but well applied. One thing that does bug me is the use of stickers (and not even well applied ones at that!) for the details in the cockpit. The lion includes two “action features.” One allows the legs to be sprung out by pressing two buttons. The other allows the hatch to the cockpit to be opened through use of Lance’s key stand. Both are kind of cool, but nothing all that impressive.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I missed out on Mattel’s subscription to the Voltron figures, so I had to get online at noon on the day of this set’s release. It wasn’t too bad with this particular set, though I did have to wait through the usual white screen of death a few times. The figures are cool. Nothing amazing, but entertaining, and certainly a step towards satisfying that Voltron-shaped hole in my collection. Lance was always my favorite of the pilots, so his release being first was really awesome.